A finalist for the Publishing Triangle’s Audre Lorde Award for Lesbian Poetry, Magnified by Minnie Bruce Pratt is published by Wesleyan University Press. The editor is Suzanna Tamminen. The winner will be announced on May 11. Here is a poem from this collection:

Blue Moon

The trees creak overhead, squeaky doors pushed forth
and back in the wind. On the porch we watch the moon
rising from whisper to guess to peach, white, then blue.

Once in a blue moon a love like this comes along.
We weren’t standing alone. Lots of people, a room vast
with politics and that ex-lover playing catch-my-eye.

You read us a story, the one who had been you. A past,
the one who had been me. Your torn shirt, my needle’s eye.

We had been alone. We had read what the other had asked.
The light shone on the pages, your face up-tilted in the glare.
Glory, mirror, future. Later I knew you were looking up at me.

I knew you, you knew me. We looked at each other,
shining on each other. Shining-on sun. Sailing-on moon.

“Blue Moon” from Magnified, © 2021 by Minnie Bruce Pratt. Reprinted with permission of Wesleyan University Press. All rights reserved.